Any ARR 2.0-2.55 players? Tell us your experience during those times.

[Marxam]

Probably most ppl will recall the bees in AK and actually having to communicate and formulate a plan of attack and when to use the LB just outside the boss arena, assuming you still had the LB after the first failed attempt. I still remember IB healing 300% and dying to death sentence in T5 because holmgang wasn't an invuln at the time but that was immediately fixed among other things. It was more game focused as opposed to lifestyle focused just as Annram said about the casual afk's in limsa which actually wasn't the case back then since ppl did that in mor dhona.

Just a shame FFXIV doesn't give newer players that sense of overcoming adversity in content that's not extreme or higher. I will say playing on PS3 it was brutal and you basically had to telegraph attacks due to shotty code and server pings with titan being notable as a group killer.

I guess the best analogy is like going from Demons Souls to Dark Souls. ARR set a lot of the foundation but was super jank with HW taking that and cranking it to the extreme and nearly perfecting it. You will never see Attack Power increases in any buffs after 4.1 because that is utterly broken and it was given to a tank, which was 50% in ARR only to be nerfed to the ground till we have just 100% direct hit crits.

[Jeeqbit]

Can be any, like something fun/weird/annoying/stressfull/boring/etc experience.

Also something that you missed during those times, like systems/job skill/etc

Good memory

• Only having to kill 3 enemies for a quest.
• Seeing Ul'dah and a bright sunny day with a sultan tree for the first cutscene. It made me want to login.
• Having this tease about a group I was going to join and fighting these masked mages and an up and down story up to level 50.
• Not having aoe on Gladiator so I had to switch targets to spread out single-target attacks and gain enmity to prevent BLM aoe from pulling enemies from me.
• Only having cure available in low level dungeons, which were half of the dungeons in the game then and using Cleric Stance to DPS.
• Doing fate trains in places like Coerthas Central Highlands and Northern Thanalan. These died when POTD released and was considered a better way to level alts.

Annoying memories

• Getting into Brayflox normal and dying in seconds as a tank to a single pack because MSQ gear wasn't good enough. Had to go and unlock PLD, buy HQ crafted gear and food.
• Having to level a conjurer to 15 to unlock PLD.
• Cross-class skills feeling useless and abandoned.
• Having to manually compare gear for alt jobs because there was no Recommended Gear button.
• Not understanding where the exits on the map were because we had no red arrows then.
• Having to explain to people what an enmity combo is.
• Having everyone run ahead of me in Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium, skipping cutscenes. After many years, they forced you to watch cutscenes and then split them into three, but only after it had ruined a lot of people's experience.
• Not having RP tags so it had to be hidden in people's search info.

We have had a lot of quality of life changes since then and it can be hard to remember just how bad it was then compared to now.

I miss stance dancing and cross-class skills, but they had good reasons why they had to go. Stance dancing was not something most people would do (they would stay in defense stance all the time, or offense stance all the time, depending on whether the player valued defense or dps more). Using skills from other classes was interesting but pressured you to level all of them, or the abilities were useless, sub-optimal and poorly designed (such as an attack you can only use when the boss is at 20% health or a dot with low potency and low duration).

Element stats were useless, but they were interesting and I liked having the freedom to meld them and use element potions to try to gain a fun advantage against a mechanic. They were removed because they could only confuse new players and we were getting an element mechanic in Eureka.

[Knot_D]

I played FFXIV since 2.3 and it's pretty interesting overall.

- Some housing item that will destroyed if you put it back to inventory (especially primals furniture).
- If you wanna change between SMN to SCH and vice versa, you better reset the stat points for the BiS...
- Spiritbonding at Urth's Found with crafting gear because the crafting materia were pretty rare. (Also spiritbonding battle gear for Novus steps...)
- ARR FATE were pretty crowded since DPS queue took so long...
- The glamours were pretty limited and it's like Coeurl swimsuit, Sailor, or Nightgown...
- Frontline with WHM Holy were pretty chaotic that SE had to disable Holy in PvP mode...
- Crafting with Hasty Touch until SB... Oh the RNG...
- Skipping cutscenes at Praetorium and Castrum.
- SCH without Esuna at Brayflox is quite chaotic. (Because SCH Esuna unlocked at level 40...)
- Marauder/WAR TP issue that makes them marking the mobs one by one so DPS don't pull others.
- SMN wasted MP so much that sometimes you had to use Energy Drain instead of Fester...
- Healer gear with accuracy completely gone after YoshiP insisted healer to heal, which is why started on ilvl 120-130, healers had to meld accuracy only for DPSing... (WHM was in rough spot because all of their DoT need accuracy while SCH's Bio and Bio 2 don't need accuracy)

Probably I'll add some if I remember something interesting

[Tetsujin]

It was a magical time. We were all new to boot. One of my fondest memories from back then was learning to do Titan EX.

I had ilvl72, I think it was my first EX ever. This was in the days where Titan could choose to do like 10 RNG stomps in a row and would kill all DPS and healers if they weren't actively countering it. Stomps would specially kill me if I didn't switch to Fists of Earth! I was a MNK and my friend BRD. He ran the game on a toaster and Titan could knock him off the stage with like a 5 second delay sometimes. It was hilarious, friends in the FC and I kept dying but learning. For our first clear our experienced WHM kited Titan around the stage for a solid couple of minutes, he was the last man standing. I'll never forget the eruption of joy over coms. Better yet, we went right back in to re-clear. I was already having a great time but God, that fight made me fall in love with this game. Eventually we farmed him and learned him so well that when we had to do Titan HM, it felt harder because of the different, slower bomb pattern.

I'll probably come back tomorrow when it's not 5AM to post some more, I love to reminisce and hear other peoples' stories.

[Visanis]

300 being the weekly cap for currency and everything still being the same prices they are today was awful. Took 3 weeks to get your body/pants.

Titan hard mode being a gatekeeper for starting your relic due to awful ping and instant tankbusters and aoes.

Spamming castrum meridianum to be able to buy darklight.

Raid bosses not having cast times for aoes or busters.

Everyone being ninja and mobbing fates when it came out.

Good times, simple times.

[Imora]

Cross class skills.

I don't honestly remember too much about that time period.... though I'll say I really don't miss missing queue pops as a dps because I was doing hildi quests and I couldn't skip the cutscenes fast enough because slow mechanical HDD.

[Imora]

sure, endgame 2.0-2.55 one could do so with higher gear.
I did runs with all tanks that went better and faster than a normal group setup.

was more refering to during leveling.
the feeling of adventure and danger.
that's something really missing in a lot of MMOs lately.

Not a fan of punishing danger in my MMOs.

Adventure, sure. Danger? not so much.

[Zarkovitch]

ARR has is flaws, but holy fudge it was fun and game felt alive. Now the game felt automatic and damn boring to predict. SHB and EW what's the difference really I just see the same game over again.

[Moomba33]

- Spiritbonding at Urth's Found with crafting gear because the crafting materia were pretty rare. (Also spiritbonding battle gear for Novus steps...)

Ohhh yes. I remember converting gear to materia would destroy the gear so materia was really expensive.

I remember early on there was an argument that Arcanist was stronger than Summoner due to cross class skills like Blood for Blood. Marauder was popular in PVP over Warrior due to having access to lots of DPS cross class skills.

Edit: I remember being too much of a noob to learn the mechanics of Coil Turn 2 so I would join 3 healer parties in PF that would just let the last node enrage and heal through the raidwide damage.

[Hurlstone]

For me, the most exciting part of 2.0-55 was the continuation of the MSQ. It really impressed me just how much story content we got in each patch, though I understand why now it has had to be streamlined. We got to do things from fight Leviathan, encounter the mysterious Yugiri, battle the zealot Lady Iceheart and then endure that harrowing night in Ul'dah. Not to mention the fact it brought in one of the main enemies/npcs from my Dragoon Job quests as a major character! The fact it left us three months away from the expansion as homeless fugitives, with most of the Scions presumed dead and Alphinaud a broken husk, was shocking and amazing. I enjoyed ARR, but it was in these patches that I truly grew to love the lore and story.